(Ken Silva, Headline USA) During Thursday’s House Weaponization Subcommittee hearing, Stanford Constitutional Law Center fellow Matthew Seligman cited his lengthy and impressive resume to assert his expertise on identifying misinformation—declaring that government should help ensure that the internet is “uncorrupted” by such content.
Then, Seligman, the Democrats’ hand-picked witness for Thursday’s hearing, proceeded to promote egregious misinformation by agreeing with the baseless claim that face masks stop the transmission of COVID-19.
“Do you agree that face masks stop the transmission of Covid?” Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, asked Seligman.
“My understanding that the scientific evidence is: Yes, it does,” the lawyer responded.
This claim has been proven to be unequivocal misinformation.
According to epidemiologist Dr. Paul Alexander, there are some 167 studies indicating that masks do little to no good in reducing the transmission of COVID. In fact, they sometimes inflict harm, studies suggest.
Even the studies cited by Rep. Garcia about masks do not support her erroneous claim that masks stop transmission. The studies Garcia entered into the congressional record Thursday say that mask-wearing merely slows COVID transmission—and even then, only to a limited degree.
The flagrant misinterpretation of scientific studies isn’t the first time Garcia has committed an embarrassing blunder during a Weaponization Subcommittee hearing. During a hearing on the Twitter Files earlier this month, Garcia demonstrated that she clearly doesn’t know what the Twitter Files are, nor does she know what Substack is, or who former New York Times writer Bari Weiss is.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia on @ShellenbergerMD, @bariweiss, & @ElonMusk:
“So you’re in this as a threesome?”
🤣🤣🤣
pic.twitter.com/qV1FzvxWN2— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 9, 2023
One might expect that a Stanford Law fellow might know better than Garcia.
However, Thursday’s hearing also revealed that Seligman lacked a basic understanding of the First Amendment when he slammed an ongoing lawsuit against Biden administration officials over their censorship efforts. Seligman said the “opposite” of what the lawsuit claims is closer to the truth—even though a U.S. District court has rejected in large part a motion to dismiss the case.
At the end of the hearing, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., advised Seligman that he should attend the First Amendment training that was implemented at Stanford in the wake of faculty and students disrupting a lectureby Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan.
“Who decides what is baseless and what is misinformation? You’ve provided a recipe for blatant viewpoint discrimination and tyranny,” Johnson said.
“I would suggest that you attend all those mandatory First Amendment training courses that your Dean at Sandford Law School has been forced to order.”
